Menu

Drupal allows you to build the majority of websites quicker than many others, but why is it so popular?

1. You can build a lot with it

It’s quicker than: a) using a normal CMS like WordPress or Joomla b) using a hardcore web development framework like Ruby on Rails c) timothy forbid, writing html code from scratch It takes longer to get working out of the box, because there’s more flexibility, more components to set up, but it gives you greater flexibility to build brochure sites, e-commerce sites, forums, social networks, all sorts.

2. There is a large community of maintainers

There is a passionate community of developers looking after Drupal and taking a lot of pride in doing it. This gives it lots of sway on the web, where most technologists hang out. I don’t know why Drupal in particular has this, perhaps because it makes it relatively easy to make sophisticated websites and you don’t need a traditional computer science background to do so.

3. Snowball Effect

When the White House, Economist and MTV Europe all began using Drupal to power their large websites a couple of years ago, It was great news for a firm like ours. Instantly we could reassure prospective clients that the platform we kept going on about – that most had never heard of – was a tried and tested piece of technology used by some leading brands. This has led to it’s adoption at Cap Gemini and many other large consulting firms, which has furthered the effect.

Security:

More secure implementation for scheduled tasks (cron.php).

More secure password system.

More secure log-in system.

Modules can be updated via the web.

Usability:

Administrative links to edit existing page elements are now available on each web page, without having to go to an administration page first.

Improved support for integration of WYSIWYG editors.

Added more drag-and-drop for administrative tasks.

Permissions now have the ability to handle more meta-data (permissions now have a description).

User 1 created as part of the installation process.

Added features to the default install profile (tagging on the Article content type).

Setting up automated task runs (cron) can now be achieved via Drupal’s configuration alone, without having to install any scripts on the web server.

Redesigned password strength validator to make it kinder and gentler, and clearer.

Renamed “input formats” to “text formats”.

Added support for default text formats to be assigned on a per-role basis.